By Graham K. Rogers

Opening Gambit:

Apple Stuff

When I started reading the article by David Segal (who is no longer on Tim Cook's Xmas card list), I had already seen a headline from an Apple-centric source that confirmed an air of negativity. Initially however I was hard pressed to find this as the opening paragraphs included a section comparing Apple's wages to other stores in the retail sector and the recent pay rises were mentioned too. Apple was higher than some, lower than others.

Just because it is around the same as other retailers is just not good enough for the NYTimes and as I began to look through I was more annoyed so ended up writing a 1200 word article that I put online. The NYTimes piece was less investigation than opinion salted with anecdotes.

While we had heard dates of 18 July then 19 July for the release of the next version of OS X -- 10.8, Mountain Lion -- AppleBitch cites MacRumors for a new date of 22 July which is the Sunday of the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim. I am not convinced, even though a Sunday is possible with the release being download only -- Sunday has lighter traffic on the Internet.

Last week I mentioned a patent that had been awarded to Apple for anti big-brother surveillance. Patently Apple was enthusiastic about this because it was about a method of assisting users to keep their personal information hidden. Megan Garber at the Atlantic has a slightly different view and leaves open the question of what Apple will do.

I was a bit prescient on Friday when I wrote that there could be a messy PR problem for Apple in the US where shoppers -- who may or may not be US citizens -- have been refused purchase of iPhones or Macs because they were heard speaking Farsi, Simon Sage reports on iMore. Although I have an Iranian colleague -- really nice guy too -- I would not know if he was speaking Farsi or (say) Arabic, so someone down in the Peach State does and they are using this to negative effect. Some good comments in this article on this over-enforcement of Apple policy.

This was picked up by the BBC site later and then I saw the ante had been upped even more when Gita Kashani wrote an open letter to Tim Cook and Apple on Huffington Post concerning this apparent discrimination of people through language. She is right and Apple needs to jump on this from a great height immediately.

Another article on Huffington Post about this matter was cross about Apple. Bitta Mostofi did not manage to mention the location of the store at all. Why would she? Apple is corporately responsible for all its staff and including Apple -- even when you are airing other dirty laundry -- is a good way to garner hits.

Apple HQ may not have been aware initially of the actions by the over-active retail staff in Georgia, but I am sure they are now.

I thought it was my imagination. Sometimes when the iPhone was in my pocket I thought I felt a vibration, indicating a message or email for example. But then, sometimes it happened when the iPhone was not in my pocket, usually ending with me calling myself stupid or something. However, I may not be going crazy after all. That phantom vibration is real and I am not alone (a relief in itself) Peter Burrows reports on Bloomberg: "Scientists speculate it's the result of random nerves firing, biochemical noise that our brains tuned out until they were reconditioned by the iPhone." Burrows analyses the iPhone and its implications in the market and in our hands in his interesting article, with the little snippet about the vibrations as part of a wider picture. My source for this story was MacDaily News.

There are some reports from developers, according to Josh Ong on AppleInsider, about the search algorithms that are used. Results have changed and this is believed to be due to the way download numbers includes, topic detection.

There are lots of videos about or of steve Jobs available, Matthew Panzarino writes as he introduces information about a project that is being started to collect these videos. Art Masak has started an archive. I see that one of the videos given as an example includes Jony Ive: with hair.

Half and Half

Other Matters

While we are on the BlackBerry maker, Dante D'Orazio on The Verge (as well as other reports) are referring to a report in the UK Sunday Times that suggests there is a plan at RIM to split the company into two: handsets and messaging. They had better do something quickly as day by day what is left of the once-stimulating company is fading away.
There were reports over the weekend that Larry Page who had disappeared from the public eye and was not planning to attend a couple of important future Google events, was seriously ill. We were pleased to read an item by Dante D'Orazio on The Verge, that these reports were wrong. Page says that there is nothing wrong.

It would seem that a lot of the enthusiastic reviews for the Surface out of Microsoft last week were missing a lot more than they were letting on. We knew (and reported last week) that the keyboard was not available for those who had been invited to the event, but it was far worse than a lot of those now-questionable first articles were letting on. Unlike Apple at its iPad releases, Microsoft apparently had a general policy at the even of Keep off the Glass.

In an article on Marketing Land, Danny Sullivan is quite angry at the way Microsoft controlled the event tightly last week, even taking away the Surface if it looked as if journalists were about to discover something. He is just as angry about columns (and there were several) that gave readers the idea that there were hands-on sessions with the device. Some of the images that appeared online and in print helped give this false impression, he claims. His critical article is well worth a read.

Sullivan's article is complemented by another on ZDNet by James Kendrick who appears in two minds about the hands on experience (or lack). He writes, "It's understandable that Microsoft is being careful with the impressions these early version tablets give the public. The approach is standard for not-yet-released hardware for some companies." In other words it was probably not ready and John Gruber's assessment about hastiness was on target. He also compares the no-touch HP TouchPad and the very hands-on iPad releases.

This approach is all a little different to Apple who let me and many others in journalist parties handle the first iPhone the day after Steve Jobs announced it in 2007; and the launch of the iPad had lots of devices all ready for the writers to put their fingers all over; while some had had their own to play with for a couple of weeks. Not with Redmond; not with the Surface.

Paul Thurrott who is as Microsoft-centric as anyone was brutally honest about the Surface release,

The devices that Microsoft showed off earlier this week weren't real; they were simply prototypes. And anyone claiming to have gotten "hands-on" time with a Surface tablet was exaggerating, at best: No one was allowed to touch a working prototype, so those typing videos occurred on dead pieces of hardware without a working screen.

For that integrity, he has risen immensely in my opinions of him.

As a late note on this, no one is really sure of the pricing of the Surface, although some rumours have suggested it will be $599 and $799 for the two versions respectively. Apple, remember, introduced the first iPad at $499. I was re-running parts of a video that has the introduction and Steve Sinovsky said that the price will be "compatible with ultrabook PCs" which sounds to me a lot more expensive than a tablet computer and also defines how Microsoft thinks about the device. Despite what was said, this is not an iPad competitor.

I was rerunning that video as I will use it in teaching presentation skills this week: you know the bits along with Ballmer's Monkey Boy Dance illustrating what not to do: Sinovsky's balletic hop skip and jump when the Surface failed is a great example.

With the cloud taking center-stage this year (and not just the iCloud part of it) there may be a need for some updates to the hardware. D-Link who are fairly well known for their wifi routers, have released two routers which are cylindrical and the photographs with the Electronista article show how unusual and eye-catching these are. As part of the new look here, it is possible to control these devices using apps (available for iOS and Android). The app is called the SharePort Mobile and is already in the iTunes store here.

Local Items

We read an article on the Bangkok Post, in the diluted Tech section, that told us Apple was going to let students in 20 schools test iPads. There will be iPads for 600 students in 20 classrooms, and training courses for teachers. That training is the key. The government project looks as if just getting the tablets and throwing them in the direction of classrooms is the limit: there is no information either on any apps that are to be developed.

A government spokesman is quoted as saying, "We'll use the seven-inch display tablet with a median price of 3,400 baht per unit. The 10-inch tablet costing 6,000 baht per unit is too expensive."

Apple seems to be saying, OK, we have let you start your project and the first of the cheapo Chinese tablets with Android have arrived here, sort of, but now we are going to let the kids see what they really should be using.

Every time you go past an iStudio in Bangkok, there are school-kids in uniform playing with the iPads. They know.

Late News

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.